One other thing: hammers. You'd probably put together two sets and discard the outer hammers. No hammer maker is going to make cauls for that. And a standard set wouldn't sound so very good <G>. Regards, Fred Sturm University of New Mexico fssturm at unm.edu On Dec 3, 2007, at 10:36 AM, Fred Sturm wrote: > Yep, as Ron says, a new and differently designed bridge would be > needed. I don't think a new plate would be absolutely necessary, but > you'd sure have to do a big modification. You would need the top > note (C8) to be two octaves lower than it is (tuned to C6), so you'd > need close to 4x the speaking length. Might be possible to cut away > some plate and add a hitchpin rail lower down. You would probably do > away with cross stringing, and have it be straight strung, so no > need for a separate bass bridge, but you'd need to attach a new > hitchpin rail there as well. > Sauter did a series of odd pianos in the 30's, including 1/8 and > 1/16 tone, for a world expo, especially for the works of a > particular Mexican composer whose name escapes me at the moment. > They showed the 1/16 tone at a couple PTG conventions - one octave > total over 96 notes. It has a bridge that slopes very, very > gradually, staying in the upper range of the board. 1/4 tone would > be less extreme, obviously, but you can't just change wire sizes on > a standard piano and manage to tune that way. You'd be raising or > lowering pitch one to two octaves at the extremes. Just not > physically possible. A big project. Sauter might be willing and able > to give you some specs that could be used as advice, a starting point. > Regards, > Fred Sturm > University of New Mexico > fssturm at unm.edu > > > > On Dec 3, 2007, at 9:01 AM, Ron Nossaman wrote: > >> >>> Caut Listmembers, >>> I have a request from the composer in residence here to convert a >>> Baldwin upright school-piano (late 70s early 80s vintage) into a >>> quarter-tone piano. He suggested keeping C4 at standard pitch. I >>> explained the need for rescaling and he still really wants the >>> entire piano permanently converted. >>> Has anyone done this? Are there string-scale people out there >>> willing to take re-scaling this on? Has anyone programmed an ETD >>> to do this (sorry I only do ET & WT(s) aurally). I have a >>> Verituner; has anyone programmed it for 1/4 tone tunings? >>> Andrew C. Anderson >> >> >> There's a bit more involved than changing string sizes. You'll need >> to change string lengths too, which in keeping C-4 at standard >> pitch, will put the new bridge well into the plate at the top end. >> So you'll be making a new plate too, with new soundboard and rib >> scale, new bridges, and a new string scale. It might get a little >> expensive. >> >> Come to think of it, you'll likely put the the bass bridge right up >> against the middle of the tenor bridge too, which might not work >> too well. >> >> Ron N >
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